The Mayor of London gives props to skeptic Piers Corbyn

George Monbiot probably burst a blood vessel when he read this. Congratulations to Piers, who doesn’t need a teraflop class supercomputer to render a forecast. This passage tells the story:

I have not a clue whether his methods are sound or not. But when so many of his forecasts seem to come true, and when he seems to be so consistently ahead of the Met Office, I feel I want to know more.

Do you remember? They said it would be mild and damp, and between one degree and one and a half degrees warmer than average. Well, I am now 46 and that means I have seen more winters than most people on this planet, and I can tell you that this one is a corker.

Never mind the record low attained in Northern Ireland this weekend. I can’t remember a time when so much snow has lain so thickly on the ground, and we haven’t even reached Christmas. And this is the third tough winter in a row. Is it really true that no one saw this coming?

Actually, they did. Allow me to introduce readers to Piers Corbyn, meteorologist and brother of my old chum, bearded leftie MP Jeremy. Piers Corbyn works in an undistinguished office in Borough High Street. He has no telescope or supercomputer. Armed only with a laptop, huge quantities of publicly available data and a first-class degree in astrophysics, he gets it right again and again.

And this:

The question is whether anthropogenic global warming is the exclusive or dominant fact that determines our climate, or whether Corbyn is also right to insist on the role of the Sun.

145 thoughts on “The Mayor of London gives props to skeptic Piers Corbyn”

Remember his feature in the ‘Great Global Warming Swindle’. When I saw that documentary, and the quality of the skeptics, and after inquiring into the science here @ WUWT, i knew AGW was in serious trouble. Piers is the smart guy; making cash out of observations of the real driver of climate…The Sun. But how does it do it?
We still havn’t cracked the connection. Fortunately for Piers, he doesn’t need the ‘how’.

Unfortunately this won’t change any minds because Boris is a Conservative, therefore an Unperson. His opinions do not exist.

This situation will only change if a large number of the Aristocrats of the Left dramatically change their minds, or die. A few reformed Aristocrats won’t do the job, because they can be Unpersoned easily. It will have to be nearly all at once, leaving the followers bereft of guidance. At that point the followers may finally put their own hands in the snow and feel the cold, rejecting the automatic instinctive “Cold is Hot.”

Eventually, we’ll understand why the Sun does what it does to Earth. Who knows how long we’ll have to wait.
In the meantime, Ol Sol is snoring again.
The way I see it, 4 years of low to very low solar activity is the penalty box.

This Piers Corbin sounds like a very inconvenient fellow, even a very dangerous fellow. One has to wonder whether the wisdom of allowing such a fellow access to means of mass communication has been discussed in the halls of government.

Boris, Mayor of London comments that…..”Nothing he says, to my mind, disproves the view of the overwhelming majority of scientists, that our species is putting so much extra CO₂into the atmosphere that we must expect global warming.” …. it seems Boris is a British lemming or has a closed mind.
Boris should read Jo Nova’s recent excellent commentary ….”The swelling ranks of sceptical scientists is now the largest whistle-blowing cohort in science ever seen. It includes some of the brightest: 2 with Nobel Prizes in Physics, 4 NASA astronauts, 9000 PhD’s in science, and another 20,000 science graduates to cap it off. A recent Senate Minority Report contained 1000 names of eminent scientists who are skeptical, and the term “professor” pops up over 500 times in that list.” http://joannenova.com.au/
Maybe later this winter ‘gritty’ Boris will be skating to his office when the Thames freezes over.

A number of us in Canada and I think other places have been doing this kind of thing for years, using the Sun, ENSO a few other oscillates and a good handle on history. I myself do not predict white or brown seasons but I do predict certain commodity prices of specific natural resources for my clients. These predictions need to be within ±10% over a five year running average. It can be done and is being done. The one thing we do not do is pay any attention to anything that even smalls of a deterministic numeric model.

HMM. Our Boris is a conviction greenie but highly, indeed over, intelligent for a politician. He also has very considerable political nous and some sympathy with more traditional Conservative right wing views. Unlike the current leadership.

I set little store by his words other than that they might mean he has detected a change in the political wind and is throwing a sop in that direction to cover his backside. And of course he is outside the Whitehall loop and so more open to shifts in public opinion.

Also remember he is the most powerful single politician in the entire UK and he doesn’t intend to give it up unless perhaps Cameron falls when he probably could not resist trying for leadership and possibly PM. And the Telegraph is the paper of the Conservative party: so no harm in ingratiating himself.

So I wouldn’t read too much into it but it is very interesting just the same.

Piers predicts a mini-ice age? Part of me hopes he’s right, if for no reason other than to shut up Al Gore and the warmers. On the other hand I’m not keen on living under a glacier, so that part of me hopes he’s wrong.

Congrats on the recognition here and from your mayor, Mr. Corbyn. I’ve been convinced after skeptically viewing one of your global forecasts in the early summer of 2009 and watching it eerily (to someone who was then skeptical) play out in the eastern Pacific and elsewhere several weeks later. It would be nice to have another forecast for North America made public this winter, like the one you proffered late last fall.

I’ve been following Piers’ work for some time and if there is one single person that could break this whole AGW charade to smithereens, its Piers. Other astrophysicists must also work harder and aim to get more coverage in the MSM also to try and keep at the lay-person in the street (who only receive their education and opinion from whatever the nightly news, the tabloids or commercial current affairs programs say), that the Sun is the most significant influence on the global climate, not the small anthropogenic contribution to a trace gas that is an ancillary greenhouse gas who’s impact is negligible >200ppm.

The Arctic Oscillation creates these cold winters. The question is, does the Sun’s variations, as incredibly small as they are, have any relation to the appearance of these atmospheric conditions? The correlation is just not there through the Sun’s cycles. The AO likely has normal periods of positive and negative dominant cycles as well as daily, weekly, and monthly noisy bounces back and forth. Right now it is dipping into the -5 territory, meaning it’s a right deep one, and it is forecasted to stay negative for a while. I also think that it may be in a longer negative-dominant cycle.

I would look to the oceans for a driver before I looked at the Sun’s variations. These co-occurring oceanic and atmospheric cycles can be teleconnected rather easily in terms of mechanisms. And the awkward imbalances between and within them may keep the energy going to sustain periods of change and periods of stability without the need for a substantial external driver of those changes to cool or warm.

Yes Piers Corbyn uses his special Solar-Lunar weather technique to make accurate predictions from a log way off, and now the UK Met Office has a hard time catching up.
They are now reduced to making a running commentary of recent past events, and precipitation predictions no more than a few hours ahead, which anyone watching the weather radar could do for themselves.

I put the special “Battle of the Forecasters” page at the website linked to my name.
That page will be expanded over the next weeks, and see the Video Wall pages as well.

Haha, hats off to Piers! When I first saw him in NYC last year during the Heartland 2nd ICCC, I was a bit amused because for me he resembled somewhat like Einstein — long and unkept hair, talking passionately and writing Greek equations to explain about the Sun and climate. Way to go, Piers!

The UK met office is not in the business of actual weather forecasting, this basic work is beneath its dignity I suppose, far more important is the new ideal of saving the planet.
The met office with its modern state of the art buildings and new super computer and income reaching near to the billion dollar mark must feel that the boring nuts and bolts grunt work of weather forecasting is far too unimportant and lowly.
With the gigantic investment in computer technologies and the hiring of hundreds of computer whiz kidz there cannot be any money left to employ actual people with the required meteorological skill set.
I can just imagine the computer salesmans hard sell as he pitches his new super computer to the bigwigs at the UKMO. This computer is so powerful and fantastic that it will do all the boring tedious repetitive observations/predictions/calculations at the touch of a button the salesman croons and the UKMO bigwigs are reeled in like Brooklyn bridge marks.
At some point the met office became corrupted by politics and agenda driven compromise, they sold their soul for a gigantic ego machine called a super computer not realising that even a super computer staffed with computer programmers cannot hope to match the mind of a fully trained and skilled and dedicated meteorologist.
Now the met office is rich with cash but piss poor in integrity and honesty and pride and legitimacy and honour, its heads might well get a K for their services but it will be as worthless as a Nobel gong.
I can only imagine the utter shame of those employees who have seen their organisation fall from the position of premier world forecaster to the laughing stock joke it is today.

Pamela Gray says:
December 19, 2010 at 10:12 pm
The Arctic Oscillation creates these cold winters. The question is, does the Sun’s variations, as incredibly small as they are, have any relation to the appearance of these atmospheric conditions? The correlation is just not there through the Sun’s cycles. The AO likely has normal periods of positive and negative dominant cycles as well as daily, weekly, and monthly noisy bounces back and forth. Right now it is…………
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
But from where do the oceans get their energy, or lack of it? From the moon? Read what CERN are doing-CLOUD project, latest news out was only last week and was on WUWT. It’s the sun, stupid, which is the main driver of all that happen to the hydro-, cryo-, bio- and atmospheres. The current freeze had been predicted years ago and now it is with us, could last for the next 30 years, could be for more, but the science was telling us so, and it is occuring. The science was, is right. The multi-million-dollar crystal balls, a.k.a. computer models at the MET office went completely off tangent.

Piers is right, the MET office was wrong and they should apologise. No wait a minute. They have caused endless unecessary hardships, suffering, injuries and deaths on the roads and elsewhere. They are criminals and they should be taken by their collective collar to the courts of justice accused with intentionally producing false predictions based on cooked climate records to suit their own personal agenda.

@Piers Corbyn: Great show. Finally you are getting what you deserve; acknowledgment of your science-based and highly accurate method of climate and weather predictions.
@Boris Johnson: You are the first British politician to stand up against the CAGW scam. Keep it up, do not look back and your place in the UK’s politcal history books is guaranteed.

You know whats scary, the cold winter in Northern Europe have nothing to do with volcanoes … what happens if one or two go off int he next year?

From Spaceweather.com:

“Earth’s stratosphere is as clear as it’s been in more than 50 years. University of Colorado climate scientist Richard Keen knows this because he’s been watching lunar eclipses. “Since 1996, lunar eclipses have been bright, which means the stratosphere is relatively clear of volcanic aerosols. This is the longest period with a clear stratosphere since before 1960.” “

Dr. Phil Jones of the CRU described Piers Corbyn as a “bit of a prat” ( or was it just “prat”). Prat in British English is a combination of a fool and a clown, at least that is the nearest I could get to it.

Piers’ chest must have expanded with pride when he read that in the climategate emails, a scientist who is doomed to scientific infamy, because history not rigged enquiries will be the judge of his work, calling you a “prat” should make you very pride.

Have you Americans discovered Boris yet? We think he’s wonderful. Even though my politics is opposite to his in most ways, he’s just great to listen to. Some American TV company should get him over for an interview. He bumbles along, usually saying something he doesn’t really mean, but he’s harmless and just a really nice guy.

For those of you who are not fully up to speed on UK politics, Boris is a very astute, intelligent and well educated person. He is also a hugely ambitious politician of the centre right. My guess is that he has sniffed how the wind is shifting in the public mind and in some areas of academia. If he is the first mainstream, centre right politician to get on board with ditching global warming, er climate change, er climate disruption then he could stand to do his career no end of good.

One of the major truths of the business is that bigger computers don’t give you better answers, they just get you to the wrong answer faster.

It’s always about the quality of thought that goes into deciding what to do, not about the machine that does it. As soon as I’d heard the spiel for a bigger computer I knew the Met Office was daft. A bigger computer doesn’t make your mistakes go away, it just makes them more exactly wrong, and wronger faster.

Sidebar on Efficiency:

There is an interesting factoid. (From a Ph.D relative who worked at NASA… no, the part that actually made things fly ;-) If you look at total improvement of hardware, it follows Moore’s Law. Doubling every 18 months or so. If you look at the total improvement in aeronautics computing, MORE comes from software. Improved methods and algorithms. Some guy figuring out a better way to do the problem.

There is a necessary corrolary to this: Crappy software can overwhelm Moore’s Law.

ANY improvement in hardware can be completely consumed, and then some, by poor software design. And that is exactly what we’ve seen. As folks have gone to less efficient Object Oriented systems, to massive linked libraries, to ever more bloated but quick to write software: At the end of the day your laptop or desktop box is about the same perceived “speed” as it was many years ago (from your perspective doing word processing and spread sheets). As memory grew from 64 kB to 64 MB and headed for several GB… as CPU speed has reached the point where it’s faster than the $40 Million Cray Supercomputer I used to manage… you find you are still waiting for that program to load and for your screen to display the answers. All due to a “sloppy and inefficient” approach to software.

I’m going to christen this “The Law Of Overwhelming Stupidity”.

Why this matters?

Because it’s that same truth, applied to organizations and goverments, that has a multimilllion POUND budget agency with God only knows how much staff and more compute power than is needed to design nuclear bombs ( or simulate plastic flow in a manufacturing die with 100% perfection) finds itself completely outclassed and outgunned by one guy who knows what he’s doing.

Piers Corbyn singlehandedly is besting them in every single contest. In California we had a tradition called “Racing for Pinks”. The title document for your car was originally pink in color, so was called a “Pink Slip”. You’d go outside town to where the 1/4 mile markers were on the road (usually with some number of hangers on, many with some degree of liquor involved) and have a drag race.

The loser handed their “Pink” and keys over to the winner.

“Why” you lose does not matter. Strict Darwinian Competition.

I have a modest suggestion: Hand The Met Office over to Piers. Just give him the keys and 100% budget and hiring / firing authority. Tell him it’s his now. Do with it whatever he wants. Then walk away.

I will guarantee you that the results will be a spectacular success.

That’s what “The Law Of Overwhelming Stupidity” guarantees. When you flush that stupidity and replace it with careful thought, you get orders of magenetude more performance.

Sun and oceans constantly varying their respective energy inputs to the troposphere and moving in and out of phase with each other to affect the tropospheric pressure distribution.

The Sun operating by affecting the the size and intensity of the polar air masses via the polar vortices. A more active sun provides a stronger downward flux of ozone depleting materials from a variety of reaction products produced by solar photon and particle impacts on the highest levels of the atmosphere. Such materials being maximised at the poles because a proportion of the incoming solar material consists of charged particles directed in to the poles along the Earth’s magnetic field lines.

The ocean operating by affecting the size of the tropical and sub tropical air masses via a variety of internal circulations modulating the rate of return to the troposphere of stored solar energy.

The jetstreams and cloudbands shifting latitudinally as a continuously variable negative response in order to always move the system back towards a temperature equilibrium between sea surface temperatures and surface air temperatures. That basic point of equilibrium being a function of pressure and density differentials at the point of contact between water and air.

All the other influences on climate are insignificant in comparison and as often as not just cancel each other out whilst overlaying short term chaotic variability on the background solar/oceanic drivers.

Piers’s primary achievement is to see that in order to discern the real climate trend one needs to first remove the assumption of a CO2 warming trend. That then renders any attempt at prediction especially at a seasonal level (and longer) far more likely to be correct.

As for forecasts on timescales of less than a season then in that area Piers is out on his own and I make no claim to match his work. Somehow he has to unravel all the multitude of short term weather influences and I leave it to others to judge how effective and useful his predictions are on those lesser timescales.

Given that the Met Office is failing on any timescale in excess of 5 days then he seems to have little competition.

The Met Office also conspicuously fails on any weather scenario that involves a non standard airflow i.e. any situation that involves a dominant northerly or easterly component.

In that respect they are no more advanced than back in early 1963 when they frequently anticipated a thaw but the arrival was often prevented by a reinforcement of the blocking setup.

I remember well often waking up to the crunch of boots on ice when the forecast had predicted temperatures above freezing.

@johnnythelowery December 19, 2010 at 7:09 pm
Yes I found out about Piers’ work from Durkin’s film too and have been following it ever since, although I’m afraid the forecasts are beyond my limited means.

@Save the sharks December 19, 2010 at 7:52 pm
He had to say that, didn’t he? CAGW has gone too far now as a paradigm and very few politicians can be seen taking a definite position at present, but actions do speak louder than words. Boris will come in for a lot of flak for this. It’s not hard to predict a chorus of howls and imagine a lot of pens dipped in acid poised to rant about the “pet astrologer” or some idiocy of the kind.

But this will nonetheless have opened a definite chink in the warmist armour and Piers will continue to tread on a lot of toes (not least in this blog, I suspect).

I would look to the oceans for a driver before I looked at the Sun’s variations.

I wouldn’t say the correlation isn’t there, only that the mechanism isn’t well understood. Someone else posted Kirkby’s lecture at CERN yesterday (or maybe Friday). I found it to be absolutely fascinating (much like Calder’s book on Svensmark’s hypothesis):

Boris USED to be a prodfound sceptic. So much so that his Mayoral opponent, Ken Livingstone, often teased him about his views.
But he has to tow the Cameron party-line that AGW is real and that we should all freeze rather than build new power stations.

It is all just PR as far as Boris is concerned, he has no real powers as Mayor and so can spend all day plotting his ascent to Prime Minister.

Jeremy Corbyn is an unreconstructed Marxist – albeit rather subdued these days. I wonder what he thinks of his brother’s works.

Well here we are in summer in Oz and we have just had snow on the mountains down south and Sydney shivered with a well below normal temp. And this is supposed to be beach weather!!. Seems to be “global cooling” – goodness me! Well before we get too excited this does happen from time to time for short periods but OZ this winter was definitely below normal temps.

Just one detail folks. Cut Boris a bit of slack. He’s only a human being not a trained scientist. In the circs his words, taken in context, seem perfectly reasonable to me. Give it time. After all it would be difficult for him to stand in a public place at all these days without the customary indulgent genuflection.

Nothing he says, to my mind, disproves the view of the overwhelming majority of scientists, that our species is putting so much extra CO₂ into the atmosphere that we must expect global warming.

The question is whether anthropogenic global warming is the exclusive or dominant fact that determines our climate, or whether Corbyn is also right to insist on the role of the Sun. Is it possible that everything we do is dwarfed by the moods of the star that gives life to the world?

I’d say that the Met offices inability to see the cold coming is criminal negligence! How many people have been killed as a direct result of the cold and the governments (both national and local) inability to plan appropriately for the cold winter?

If we had a real parliament, filled with real politicians, really working in the national interest then it wouldn’t surprise me if the role of the Met office and it’s religious belief in Mann Made Global Warming was investigates. However, as we have a parliament every bit as clueless as the last bunch of corrupt morons I doubt we will see anything happening in our lifetime!!

Boris is a clever boy. He is probably more clever than most politicos, he has a better education than many (Literae Humaniores, or “Greats” at Oxford, which, importantly, gives him a longer view in time, most relevant to the AGW debate). His disclaimer:

“Nothing he says, to my mind, disproves the view of the overwhelming majority of scientists, that our species is putting so much extra CO₂ into the atmosphere that we must expect global warming.

“The question is whether anthropogenic global warming is the exclusive or dominant fact that determines our climate, or whether Corbyn is also right to insist on the role of the Sun. Is it possible that everything we do is dwarfed by the moods of the star that gives life to the world? The Sun is incomparably vaster and more powerful than any work of man.”

Hoping to have some input here from Richard Holle on the other side of the pond. Holle’s last “coffee break rambles” made me sure we have another Einstein-standard mind well trained in the astrophysics necessary for workable weather forecasting.

I hope someone of Nigel Calder’s stature ghostwrites a popular book equivalent to The Chilling Stars, to explain Corbyn’s and Holle’s work (and others too in astrophysics).

Someone… someone… this will be another Book of the Century…

yes I know, we need to take out UHI-etc data mismanagements at the same time as reinvesting in solar theories… though Piers’ approach, by simply looking at weather in comparable line-ups, bypasses that need to some extent.

The problem is that successive governments have swallowed the whole global warming scam hook line and sinker and as a result flogged off the snow ploughs and other snow moving equipment. We are now in a situation where a western developed country is trying to cope with Arctic conditions using methods that have no changed much since mediaeval times. Piers Corbyn will hopefully now be paid more attention, and george Monbiot and the Guardian will allow an open discussion on the subject of climate change.

@LazyTeenager: “You do remember that blistering summer in the UK a year or so back don’t you? And not just the UK. Maybe the wishful thinking produces amnesia.”

A year or two back? Actually it would have been 2003. And that really was a weather phenomena. It only lasted one day, wasn’t repeated and only affected a handful of sites in the UK, one of them being Heathrow airport which was precicted to be the first site to record the hottest temperature ever (perhaps because it is the site most prone to urban heat island effects?). It had no impact on the rest of Europe and its been getting colder ever since!

Even Team-AGW wouldn’t claim that event had anything to do with global warming – check the internet if you don’t believe me.

However, the record cold temperatures we have right now have been experienced for three years in succession and cover a large part of the northern hemisphere involving a multitude of separate weather systems. Now that’s climate.

LazyTeenager says:
December 20, 2010 at 12:20 am
“…Another interesting question is why you think a record cold winter or two is proof of global cooling, while you don’t think that a record hot summer or two is proof of global warming….”

Because the predicted exponential rise in the hockey stick graph, predictions of warming, and predictions of snow being a thing of the past clearly indicated the overwhelming theory of the AGW crowd is that of unprecedented warming. In that scenario record cold events would be much more unlikely than record heat events.

Try this experiment at home. Turn up the thermostat in your house. Wait. What happens? Do you get periods of intense cold?

This cold weather proves that the AGW theories are completely wrong and/or underpowered. If AGW is correct then what IS known is no scientist has the formula. Go back to the drawing boards. Start over using Mr. Corbyn.

It’s really Hannan and the small govermnment crew among the tories who should be targeted ’till they see the light of day now. They have potential (but are young and grew in the “save the planet” creed).

LazyTeenager: 2006 was pretty hot, but it happens from time to time; the summers since have been largely damp and dreary. Back in the 70s we had a warm November (it was 1978) which ended with a very heavy rainfall on Sat 25th and a hard frost on the 26th. We were being assailed by fears of a new ice age at the time!

The various scares the ‘leaders’ of the human race think up are much more to do with Fear, Control and Taxes.

I’m enjoying the very pretty and deep layers of ‘global warming’ outside….you know, that stuff that was supposed to become a rare, if not absent, phenomenon!

Boris Johnsons job is to keep the traffic moving in London. A couple of weeks ago we had the Scottish transport minister(Stewart Stevenson) resign, because, in his words, ‘he listened to the wrong forecasts’. (he listened to the met office)
These politicians are in a dilemma, what impacts climate most, a few parts per million of atmospheric plant food, or a gigantic ball of boiling gas in the sky ? its a tricky one.

The UK Met Office is an arm of the British Government – it’s part of the Ministry of Defence. And it’s headed up by an eco-fanatic. The UK government is reaming the backside out of us on taxes based on CO2 and the mythical global warming narrative, so the Met Office has to keep ‘on message’, and is an arm of the government to do so. The Met Office consistently falsely reports the actual and forecast temperatures when it is cold – at the moment by around 5-6 degrees Celsius: take about 5 degC off what the Met Office say, and double the snow forecast and you’ll be about right. Anyone with a thermometer and a ruler can get a better measurement of air temperature and snow depth than the Met Office. Bear in mind also that the density of snow decreases with temperature, so at lower temperatures one will get more height of snow for the same amount of precipitation.

Another phenomenon. Anyone listening to the BBC will have noted that all talk about global warming is shunted off air when we are in the midst of a deep freeze. This is surely another cynical policy. They bang on about global warming incessantly except when it is very cold in the UK. But if weather is not climate, why the change? They probably guess that people will become cynical and disbelieving of global warming news items when they are faced with temperatures that England has not seen for over 300 years. But this unspoken policy (with which the journalists and editors must be complicit) simply reveals the cynicism of their own position: weather is not climate unless it suits them, and it’s a one way street with these warmistas. I call this propaganda – making false connections when it suits, and denying connections when it suits.

polistra says:
December 19, 2010 at 7:45 pm
Unfortunately this won’t change any minds because Boris is a Conservative, therefore an Unperson. His opinions do not exist.

This situation will only change if a large number of the Aristocrats of the Left dramatically change their minds, or die. A few reformed Aristocrats won’t do the job, because they can be Unpersoned easily. It will have to be nearly all at once, leaving the followers bereft of guidance. At that point the followers may finally put their own hands in the snow and feel the cold, rejecting the automatic instinctive “Cold is Hot.”
Gareth says:
A gentle reminder to all those who would undermine the integrity of this site for narrow political purposes, Mt Corbyn comes from an old and well established left wing family, and is brother to Jeremy Corbyn MP, a left wing member of the UK parliament. Climate skepticism is not the preserve of right wing politicians and we are not as the catastrophists suggest a right wing group backed by big business. We are a group from all sectors of society who have chosen to open our minds and ears to the truth.

To those speculating on mechanisms, there is a lot of published data, that provides a number of theories that dovetail. First the Sun, you look at the cycles and you can see the variation in weather trends. At the moment, based on Solar measurements, we are facing a mini ice age. Farmers in many countries have been able to predict long term trends for generations, just like Corbyn (one of my modern day hero’s). Solar activity controls magnetic fields controls cosmic radiation reaching the earth. This is part of Svendsmark’s brilliant insight.
Then you have the planets, going around the sun. The gravitational center of the solar system passes through the sun, most of the time. The center of gravity affects solar activity by tugging at the sun’s own center of gravity. Until recently centuries, planetary alignment has been used to predict long term trends. Milankovic cycles. They weren’t always right, but there’s a millenia of data in some civilizations to back test. So.. planetary alignment affects solar activity which affects cosmic radiation entering the atmosphere, which affects cloud formation. Different theories, all linked. You can even use the same principle to predict earthquake frequency.
The most interesting thing I’ve seen on this was Svensmark working with some others. AGW computer models do poorly in back testing a few years. Svensmark’s theory combined with fluctuations of cosmic radiation over milenia due to galaxy spanning clouds was able to be back tested using fossil studies. Milenia.
I said too much. If this is disjointed, there are other observations that dovetail to support this model. The solar activity can be back tested and compared to rainfall studies (I’ve seen South African and Australian studies on this), drought, and a range of climate activity. It already has.
The biggest tragedy of the AGW scare is that long term weather forecasting can be and IS done reliably and accurate enough to make a difference. Like Corbyn. But anyone doing work in the field is demonized and rubbished. And the results of such models are not allowed to be used.
I wish I was smart enough, had the time, and the money to be able to produce such a back testable model. I bet it would fit on a desktop.

This guy is a rich, landed gentry type, politician. He knows where his revenue streams are, and where they can be expanded (Carbon taxes). I see all this posturing by scientists, politicians etc as a diversionary tactic. Let the unwashed masses “think” the powers are “leaning toward the sceptic” side, all the while, passing draconian laws in support of AGW in secrecy. OMG!!! Never!

Ah another crack in the edifice that is AGW. Of course the problem with these cracks is that they allow other ideas to seep in. Then during these cold spells they expand and soon the whole rotten edifice comes tumbling down. The freeze-thaw action of ideas!

The following is a reference from “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds”
“it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one”
By Charles MacKay, preface, unnumbered page, written 1841, reprinted 14th November, 2010.

This is quite likely what will happen to AGW.

In fact, it’s happening now with the public in many countries gradually slipping away (Public opinion polls).
It’s more difficult for practicing scientists who have nailed their flags to the mast.
More difficult again for institutions, which have watch dogs ensuring the creed of the cult is still adhered to.
But is is happening there too.

Anthony, this could be one to follow up on or keep an eye on for the reply:

The BBC news last night said that the government was asking the Chief Scientist (sorry missed his name) whether we were likely to continue having these cold winters, so that we can better prepare if necessary.

All pretty much missed apart from the Russian heat wave. I had them all forecast virtually to the day, but failed one period at the end of September when it was cooler that I expected. Piers though has had more success with winter temp`s then me, apart from January 2008.http://www.sunrisecelebration.com/sunrise-blog/?p=135

miket says:
December 20, 2010 at 4:12 am
The BBC news last night said that the government was asking the Chief Scientist (sorry missed his name) whether we were likely to continue having these cold winters,
=======================================================
Now how stupid and scary is that?
Government actually thinks these glorified weathermen have a clue.

Humans have a weakness in understanding long term issues that affect the planet and not just their small portion of it. So when it’s cold in Britain, the British stop believing in AGW. If most of Europe remains cold, then most of Europe will stop believing in AGW. And even tampering with the world temperature records won’t stop that problem because you just can’t believe in AGW when you’re cold.
But more on topic, I thought the correlation between the temperature record and sun-spot activity wasn’t so great.

Just to correct those who try to pigeonhole Boris as a Conservative or Thatcherite or whatever.

The more accurate description is that Boris is Boris! A stereotypical politician is the last thing that he is. Under the floppy haired bumbling exterior is a very shrewd and quick brain. My suspicion is that very few of the words that come pouring out from Boris are as casually uttered as he likes to make them appear.

For those who might like to know a little more of him at his bumbling best, try this

We can assume that Boris was not on his first glass of bubbly when he gave this speech. Boring he isn’t.

My friends the Jews with the Massad must have sent a stuxnet like virus to The Met computor. The computor is never wrong. They also must have gamed the weather to get rich on heating oil prices and grit prices.

When discussing the Sun, let’s know that there are three separate discussions related to its input. One deals with whatever incoming phenomenon is being measured at the outer edge of Earth. The other deals with whatever is being measured here at the surface, and the third deals with whatever is being measured that is let loose back out into space. There is direct evidence and plausible mechanism that Earth is by far and away the most varying entity in this set of measurements. For every post saying the Sun is the main cause of the changes here on Earth (and saying it does is not evidence or mechanism), there is direct and compelling evidence and plausible mechanism that the Earth itself is the main source of the variation that drives the changes in weather patterns we experience out the door.

Grand minimums are indeed long. Longer than many weather pattern affecting oscillations intrinsic to Earth. I would expect some of these cycles to be in the cool phase during these minimums. That does not mean that the Sun did it. Sure the Sun does have a small affect on weather pattern variations. But I just don’t see it as the major cause of these variations. Why? The null hypothesis (Earth’s intrinsic sources of variation) has not been disproven. And certainly not by saying, “It’s the Sun stupid”, or saying it was cold during this or that minimum.

Gareth Phillips says:
December 20, 2010 at 3:48 am
. . . Climate skepticism is not the preserve of right wing politicians and we are not as the catastrophists suggest a right wing group backed by big business. We are a group from all sectors of society who have chosen to open our minds and ears to the truth.

But you have to admit that it is the Left, not the Right, who have by and large lept upon Climatism with a fervor matched only by religious fundamentalists. That’s doubtless because the factitious problem of CAGW is a great excuse for statist ‘solutions’.

Hoping to have some input here from Richard Holle on the other side of the pond. Holle’s last “coffee break rambles” made me sure we have another Einstein-standard mind well trained in the astrophysics necessary for workable weather forecasting.

I hope someone of Nigel Calder’s stature ghostwrites a popular book equivalent to The Chilling Stars, to explain Corbyn’s and Holle’s work (and others too in astrophysics).

Lucy…I am beginning to think you are easily led. In the past you have given the same admiration to Fred Bailey in regard to his solar chord theory which has now been completely debunked and as a result of reasonable scientific debate he has taken down his website. I respect Fred and Howard for following the scientific method.

Richard Holle has presented some theory but as yet has not provided anything concrete.

I believe that good philosophers fly alone, like eagles, and not in flocks like starlings. It is true that because eagles are rare they are little seen or heard, while the starlings fill the skies with their shrieks, and foul the earth beneath them.

Yes, but if we can open our minds on climate we should also be able to open our minds on politics and realize the left, socialism, communism, is really all about enslaving the population in dependency on government (the elites who run it, really). AGW is just a way they have found of intensifying that process of enslavement.

LazyTeenager says:
December 20, 2010 at 12:20 am
“…Another interesting question is why you think a record cold winter or two is proof of global cooling, while you don’t think that a record hot summer or two is proof of global warming….”

Many reasons. One is that according to AGW and the theory of GHG forcing, the effects would be felt with higher minimums rather than higher maximums – ie – milder winters. This is due to the fact that cold air is dryer and therefore the CO2 component of radiative forcing is proportionally greater. Another reason is that according to NASA, the recent heat waves in Russia were due to an atmospheric blocking event – an effect that happens when Rosby waves move against the jet stream at the same speed – and not the result of CO2. Also, despite these heat waves, the globally averaged temperature has not changed much over the last decade.

The more likely scenario is he will be vilified somehow, his data and methods (private assets) will be demanded for verification, when he refuses, he’ll end up next to Julian Assange.

That is not the British way of doing things. He’s already been vilified by the CAGW faithful and that hasn’t worked because he has this irritating habit of beating the official forecasts and making our public funded forecasting services look like idiots. They’re also tried asking for his methods, and Piers has naturally refused given he has a business to run based on his forecasting methods.

What would be more likely is an offer of a senior post at the Met Office is dangled to bring him in from the cold and into the Establishment. Then, after having acquired his methods, an unfortunate round of budget cuts can cast him out into the wildnerness again. Normality and the status quo is restored. Given the Met Office is a trading fund and Piers is a competitor, that could also be handled as a simple M&A activity.

As Piers is a competitor to our heavily subsidised state weather service, his business is a little vulnerable, especially if they figure out how he’s making his forecasts, so becoming an ‘insider’ in some fashion may end up beneficial.

As folks have gone to less efficient Object Oriented systems, to massive linked libraries, to ever more bloated but quick to write software: At the end of the day your laptop or desktop box is about the same perceived “speed” as it was many years ago

Wow!, you are one brave cookie!!!
Taking on the Object Oriented crowd takes infinitely more courage than taking on the AGW mob.

As it happens, I agree entirely. Software design and development is suffering from a generation of people who don’t know how to code in any other way, and force everything into the straight jacket of their paradigm. Not every problem can be neatly and efficiently solved in an object oriented manner. It has its place, but it is most definitely not suitable for all purposes.

Shared libraries were invented to save on disk and memory, both of which are now incredibly cheap and plentiful. Static linking had a lot to commend it, not least of all independence from “dependency hell”, and having to spend an inordinate amount of time and effort to construct the right environment before any piece of software can actually run.

Computer science and the art of programming are currently in a deep dark hole, guarded by the priests of OOP who are as vicious as any AGW proponent.

For every post saying the Sun is the main cause of the changes here on Earth (and saying it does is not evidence or mechanism), there is direct and compelling evidence and plausible mechanism that the Earth itself is the main source of the variation.”

I’m not against ascribing as much as possible to internal system variability. Leif Svalgaard is at least consistent in proposing virtually 100% internal variability as he must if he limits the potential solar effect to a maximum of 0.1C.

But, but ,but:

I just cannot get ALL the observed phenomena to fit that limited scenario.

Increased jet stream meridionality did not happen as the troposphere warmed and the Arctic ice declined from the late 70s onward. In fact until around 2000 the Arctic Oscillation became increasingly positive with more zonal jets.

Zonality (the opposite of meridionality) did start to DECREASE from 2000 onwards as the sun passed the peak of cycle 23 but only slowly at first. The weakening of the AO took some 5 years or so and only over the past few years have we seen a pronounced negative AO at just the same time as really low solar activity.

So we see a lower level of solar activity than for a century or more at the same time as the most negative AO in the historical record.

Anyone declaring that that is pure coincidence has an uphill task in my view and if it is not a coincidence then it’s to the dustbin for established climatology.

Not only did the recently negative AO coincide with a less active sun but also the earlier strongly positive AO coincided with a more active sun and the mid 20th century cooling spell with a more negative AO coincided with weaker cycle 20.

And the LIA was characterised by more meridional jets (see ships logs) and a less active sun with the MWP characterised by more zonal jets with Greenland warm enough for agriculture at a time of more active sun.

Just too many mutually supporting and consistent ‘coincidences’ for plausible deniability.

That is not to ignore the existence of sizeable internal system variability but I propose that most such internal variability must be ocean sourced with pretty much every other factor dwarfed by what the oceans can do.

I suggest that the oceanic variability plus very short term chaotic variability can obscure the solar effect for much of the time but in due course the solar effects become dominant and prevail over periods such as the time between the MWP, LIA and today.

At times when there is a sudden pronounced step change in solar activity such as the transition to cycle 24 the solar effects swamp everything else and cannot easily be ignored.

So if the sun alters the vertical temperature profile of the atmosphere to alter surface pressure distribution to cause changes in jetstream zonality or meridionality the next two questions are:

Do more meridional jets cause an increase in cloudiness and albedo for overall system cooling as long as less solar energy gets into the oceans ?

Do more zonal jets cause a decrease in cloudiness and albedo for overall system warming as more solar energy gets into the oceans?

A history lesson for those interested. Boris Johnson was accused by Ken “the red” Livingstone, his left wing Labor Party opponent, of being “one of the few politicians in the world, and the only major candidate for Mayor, to support George Bush in opposing the Kyoto agreement.” This was as big an insult one could have hurled as we all know how popular George Bush and his decision to pull out of Kyoto were among regressive circles.

Actually, thinking about it. That quote from Galileo should also be an ode to Anthony and all the other brave folks who have given up their valuable time and money in order to restore sanity and scientific rigour to the world.

The last time we lost our sense of the value of true science, was the middle of the Roman Era, with the loss of the last of the great technicians, engineers and ‘scientists’ – Hero of Alexandria. That scientific depression lasted some 1500 years. We do not want a repeat of that Dark Age. And yet there are innumerable groups and organisations out there, who are more than prepared to take us back to another Dark Age.

For those unfamiliar with Hero of Alexandria, he created fire engines, slot machines, talking mechanical birds, automatic doors and a steam turbine back in the first century AD. The steam engine is number 50 in this list.http://www.history.rochester.edu/steam/hero

He also made jugs for turning water into wine – which became rather famous in this era ;-)

.

So here is my personal thanks to Anthony and his team. And if you can afford to put a Christmas bonus in the TIP BOX on the top right, then please do. The Church of Scientific Rationality does not run on Hail Marys alone – as Archbishop Marchinkos once said (former president to the Vatican Bank).

E.M.Smith says:
December 20, 2010 at 12:14 am
“The Law Of Overwhelming Stupidity” it is simply great.
Time ago a lady scientist, here in WUWT, argued in favor of her “settled science” that it was based on years of effort solving advanced mathematic equations, ignoring, of course, that computers do all those using only arithmetics. Thus, the “overwhelming” part of your wise phrase describes “self conceit” as the origin of confusion.
Where is it my XT computer?

Yes, but if we can open our minds on climate we should also be able to open our minds on politics and realize the left, socialism, communism, is really all about enslaving the population in dependency on government (the elites who run it, really). AGW is just a way they have found of intensifying that process of enslavement.

Indeed we must ensure our minds are open to all information and heed the fact that extreme right wing totalitarians governments do exactly the same thing, or are we overlooking fascism, Military Juntas etc in the pursuit of the right wing cause? Lets not give the warmists ammunition, we are non political and hopefully there is no room for the fantasies of right or left wing extremists in our cause.

Steven, you use the same argument postulated by AGW theories woven through the midst of strong intrinsically driven variability, yet you deny the voracity of those theories. Eventually CO2 will show up. Eventually the Sun’s affects will show up. The logic is very faulty for both theories.

Boris Schwarznegger, eh? I can just see him riding up the gangway at the next Intergovernmental Climate Junket on a Harley Davidson, his beer belly straining at the leather outfit, menacing in shades, and braying in his posh Old Etonian accent, “Hasta la vista, old chum”, and tugging at Pachauri’s false beard.

No. The Met Office were consulted by the UK Department for Transport in a report out in October concerning preparedness of the transport infrastructure for winter. In October they were projecting a warmer than average winter with around 70% confidence. The Met Office advised that there was a 1-in-20 chance of a severe winter this year, or any year. In 2008, then, there was thus a 1-in-8000 chance that we would have three consecutive severe winters . The Met Office complain that the general public don’t understand risk and statistics, but I have to say that I don’t favour 1-in-8000 odds, i.e. the likelihood of three severe winters in a row only likely to occur once every 8000 years. I’m afraid these are actual Met Office statistics. If THEY understand statistics and risk, they should be repenting in dust and ashes by now because those odds are just way too long. Now, we know that the models that the Met Office use for climate change projections are the very same models as they use for weather forecasting – you might think they’d be different, but they categorically claim that they are the same.

With odds of 8000:1 I’m prone to question whether there is some bias or tomfoolery going on, and with the Met Office that’s a dead certainty. They are headed up by an eco-fanatic and are part of the UK Ministry of Defence.

Here are some extracts from the DfT report ‘The Resilience of England’s Transport Systems in Winter’ (July and October 2010):

“We have discussed these issues in some depth with the Met Office and their climate research team at the Met Office Hadley Centre…we are advised to assume that the chance of a severe winter in 2010-11 is no greater (or less) than the current general probability of 1 in 20…The probability of the next winter being severe is virtually unrelated to the fact of just having experienced two severe winters, and is still about 1 in 20. The effect of climate change is to gradually but steadily reduce the probability of severe winters in the UK…we need to understand and accept that the chance of a severe winter is still relatively small…the probability of next winter being severe continues to be relatively small.”

Remember – based on the Met Office models (on which the whole climate change scam is based), three severe winters in a row has a probability of 1-in-8000, or 0.0125%. Or, put it the other way, in 2008 the Met Office would have been 99.9875% certain that we would not have three severe winters on the trot. Start looking at these probabilities stacking up and understand that the global warming mantra is a scam.

We are always being reminded that weather is not climate. Fine. But when once-in-8000 year ‘weather’ events turn up you really do have to start asking questions. When the Met Office in their UKCP08 report were projecting much warmer summer and winter temperatures in UK to 70% and 90% confidence, that same year they would have put 99.9875% confidence on there not being three extreme winters on the trot.

One of the most glaring pieces to your argument is that when intrinsic active variability is low, these minute extrinsic drivers will show up. The fault in this logic is that intrinsic drivers don’t shut off as drivers during periods of quiet or long term slower change. The energy is still there to drive climate during periods of change as well as periods of quiet, in the short term and long term. Are you saying that the intrinsic drivers flip to standby to allow minute drivers to show? Or are you saying that somehow these extrinsic drivers of climate change get more powerful when intrinsic factors driving weather pattern variations have paused? As far as I can tell, your argument stands on correlation between extrinsic drivers of change and long term temperature anomaly, but regardless of your proposed mechanisms, the intrinsic mechanisms of change, be it fast or slow, have not been disproved either through lack of correlation or through lack of plausible causation. Therefore the null hypothesis stands.

You and AGWers must prove both your favorite theory AND disprove the null hypothesis. Saying, and correct me if I’m wrong in what you are saying, that for most of the time the null hypothesis (intrinsic drivers of short term change and long term trends) is quite easily the driver, means that the null hypothesis stands.

I would bet that the great George Monbiot, a true legend in his own lunchtime, is writing a rebuttal to Boris’s Telegraph piece right now, which will be posted on George’s blog in the Grauniad and filled with “yeah, me to…” comments from his loyal sycophants. Any comments supporting Boris will be at risk from deletion by the mods there, who are incredibly protective of the Great Climate commentator. George’s hatred for Boris is partly tribal as he hates everyone who will not accede to his Socialist doctrine, and he hates Boris particularly for beating the Socialist Mayoral incumbent in the last Mayoral election and for backing GW Bush in his rubbishing of the Kyoto Agreement.
Should be entertaining to read George’s Blog to catch his reaction.

Boris Johnson is not even ‘sitting on the fence’ on this one. Pointing out some interesting predictions is friend has come up with that contrdict warmist (met Office et al) forecasts , then saying it does not disprove the view of the overwhelming majority of scientists, that our species is putting so much extra CO2 into the atmosphere that we must expect global warming.

He believes and subscribes to the latter view as every politician, scientist and journalist (with one exception) does in this country. If he didn’t he wouldn’t stand a hope of being re-elected as London’s mayor.

We have an energy secretary, Chris Huhne, whose deranged obsession with global warming has committed us to spending £300 billion over 10 years to comply with the EU’s requirement that within this period 30% of our electricity must come from renewables, mainly through thousands more expensive wind turbines. By massively rigging the market against any form of electricity derived from fossil fuels (coal or gas) our electricity bills will be trebled from typically £0.134/kWh to £0.403/kWh adding £500 to £600 per household. He has full backing of the government and opposition on this with no dissenting voices. This they believe will make us “the greenest and most poverty stricken economy in the world”.

James Delingpole put it well – “Boris Johnson is so ambitious, he makes Alexander the Great look like Olive from On The Buses.” If so, it can only mean Boris has read the tea leaves, and has divined which way AGW is headed. Maybe he could stick his head over the parapet once more, and express some equally nuanced doubts about the coalitions new ‘energy policy.’

One of my favorite things I used to do with my grandma was use the old pressure cooker during canning season. When I got married in ’76, one of the gifts I got from my family was a big-ass pressure cooker. I still have it. Grandma’s had different, calibrated vie weight, “rockers” that were used to adjust internal pressure.

The most important working parts of the pressure cooking system are the steam valves (there are two, one for safety and one called a “rocker”), not the heat source. Grandma used hers on a wood cook stove. When the stove top splattered and sizzled water, it was hot enough to cook on. The size of the cooker valve is key to cooking the contents, the exact heat from the stove not so much. More advanced cookers come with different rocker weights to increase or decrease internal pressure. You don’t have to adjust the heat source at all.

So one could say that the most important part of pressure cooking is intrinsic to the pressure cooker and can be adjusted, with the heat source being extrinsic and can either vary a bit or be quite stable without much change happening inside the cooker. Take the rocker off, or change weights and suddenly change is upon us.

The metaphor isn’t perfect but may help some understand my thinking of extrinsic versus intrinsic drivers of weather (short term and long term) pattern change.

Could someone please direct me to an explanation of what is known about Piers’ “Solar Lunar Action” method of forecasting? I understand that the details are closely held for business reasons. Still someone must have some idea how it works.

“Pamela Gray says:
December 20, 2010 at 9:09 am
Steven, you use the same argument postulated by AGW theories woven through the midst of strong intrinsically driven variability, yet you deny the voracity of those theories. Eventually CO2 will show up. Eventually the Sun’s affects will show up. The logic is very faulty for both theories.”

Not so. The sun’s effect is clear throughout history provided one looks at a long enough period of time to remove the more transient effects of oceanic and other forcings.

It now appears that the sun’s effect can be readily seen when there is a sudden step change such as the transition from active cycle 23 to quiet cycle 24.

The same cannot be said for AGW. By that account AO should still be firmly positive.

What is your explanation for such a large number of climate indicators (previously listed by me) all changing pretty much in unison as the sun came down from the cycle 23 peak ?

“Drooping Turns says:
December 20, 2010 at 9:52 am
Could someone please direct me to an explanation of what is known about Piers’ “Solar Lunar Action” method of forecasting?”

I believe he superimposes lunar effects onto solar effects to anticipate jetstream changes and extrapolates from there to the likely weather and climate consequences for specific regions.

Personally I think it’s just solar and oceanic effects working together. I don’t see how the lunar influences could work but hey, it’s not my theory and I support anyone brave enough to try.

I also think that natural chaotic variability has too great an effect in the short term for me to try predicting anything other than general seasonal characteristics but if Piers can make that extra step and produce a useful product then good luck to him.

I predict that AO will not return to the late 20th century level of positivity in the absence of a more active sun and/or a very powerful El Nino.

I predict that with the degree of meridionality in the jets that we currently have the ocean heat content will not begin to rise.

I predict that increasing cloudiness and global albedo will not reverse in the absence of a more active sun and /or a powerful El Nino.

I predict that we will soon find that the slight net warming of the stratosphere since the mid 90s will not have gone back to the previously observed cooling and may now be warming a bit more noticeably.

I predict that the unexpected upper level ozone trends observed between 2004 and 2007 will be continuing.

I predict that once the cool surface waters from the current strong La Nina penetrate the more poleward oceans then unless we also see a very large El Nino the tropospheric air temperatures will show a significant drop.

I predict that for so long as the sun stays quiet, the AO stays negative, cloudiness and albedo fail to decline, then less energy will enter the oceans and the balance between El Nino and La Nina will shift in favour of stronger La Ninas and that despite those La Ninas the ocean heat content will not rise significantly.

There are lots of other predictions that I could make but those will do for going on with.

What predictions would you like to make on the basis of internal system variability ?

Stephen Wilde says:
December 20, 2010 at 10:29 am
What if the Moon’s “tides”, apart from pulling sea waters up, helps in pulling some heat up to the space?
BTW.The kind of Moon eclipse we will have next morning, at 08:53:34 UT it has not happened since the beginning of Maunder Minimum (coinciding with NH winter solstice). At that time the Moon position will be: Declination: 23 deg.43′ and R.A.: 5h 58′ 45″

There is some evidence that lunar influences on tides affect the globe’s climate, particularly via the southern hemisphere, where there most of the oceans are, as opposed to the Northern hemisphere, where most of the landmasses are.

LazyTeenager says: Another interesting question is why you think a record cold winter or two is proof of global cooling, while you don’t think that a record hot summer or two is proof of global warming.

For the same reason that Warmers like to fantasize that “30 year average weather” is “climate”. It isn’t. There are known 60+ year WEATHER cycles, so a “30 year average of weather” is actually a ‘short term trend’ filter that will follow those cycles up and down. So we had “New Little Ice Age” quackery in the ’70s and AGW quackery now. Give it about 5 more years and we will have the “New Little Ice Age” stories back again. (Though this time we have a shot a real one due to solar action… all we need now is one big ass volcano to kick it over the top… er, under the bottom?)

So tell you what, you shift to defining “climate” properly as EITHER a function of: [ latitude, elevation, distance to water, major geography (i.e. behind a mountain rain shadow is dryer)] OR a 3000 year average of weather (so that Bond Event cycles are not contaminating with a bogus trend off THAT cycle) and I’ll stop using recent weather as evidence that nothing really has happened. Deal?

But you use recent weather (and 30 years is damn near instant in a geologic climate sense) then I can use recent weather. Period. Full stop.

Annei says:
Back in the 70s we had a warm November (it was 1978) which ended with a very heavy rainfall on Sat 25th and a hard frost on the 26th. We were being assailed by fears of a new ice age at the time!

Interesting… In trading (another field with chotic and fractal behaviours…) a reversal of trend is often preceded by an excursion “the wrong way”. So a rising stock will have a “blow off top” where it gets very high, then plunges. Often followed by a return toward that top. Spike, plunge, return, reversal of trend. Sign of a coming plunge, not a rapid rise. Here, too, we have a 70s cold period with an anomalous “wiggle” and reversal and in 1998 we had a spike up, then plunge, return to “retest the high” that failed, and a reversal of trend into our present freezer…

Spooky how similar it all is. Like riding a bike. To go right you first flick the front wheel a little left, that leans the bike, then you return to the right turn with the wheel once leaned into it… Most folks do this instinctively (it’s the hard bit for kids learning to ride a bike. They turn the handle right and fall over to the left while they are trying to figure out what’s going on…)

Useful thing to incorporate into the ‘ol mental model…

latitude says:
Now how stupid and scary is that?
Government actually thinks these glorified weathermen have a clue.

Sirrah, you denigrate weathermen! Might I correct that for you?

“Government actually thinks these FAILED weathermen WANNABIES have a clue.”

See, much better. Weathermen have to be right or they lose their jobs. Weathermen deal with reality. Weathermen have a clue. Weathermen beat the pants off whatever it is they have at The Met Office. Oh yeah, “Climate Scientists” (who would be better off studying geography if they really wanted to understand climate… Top of mountain – Alpine. Far from water behind mountain, air warming as it approaches – desert.)

Stephen Wilde says:
December 20, 2010 at 7:21 am

Increased jet stream meridionality did not happen as the troposphere warmed and the Arctic ice declined from the late 70s onward. In fact until around 2000 the Arctic Oscillation became increasingly positive with more zonal jets.

Very nicely done.

FWIW I’m working on integrating some ideas and not going as fast as I’d like. If anyone else would like to poke at this, feel free. The basic pattern is reached by following the trail of causality backward.

More cold in N.H. from a weak AO letting the cold air leak out.

More cold in S.H. from a STRONG southern current (wind driven) whacking into S. America and increasing the current strength into that cold center of the Pacific. (Drakes Passage is a bottleneck, so increased circumpolar current has to turn more volume north)

Due to the differences in land shapes, what ought to be an offsetting polar oscillation (one speeds up, the other slows down) becomes a global hot / cold cycle. N.H. driven by air as the water is constrained. S.H. driven by water as Drakes Passage forces it to be un-constrained.

The polar winds are diven by variations in the polar air flow, driven by solar actions. The variations in S.Polar air flow drive the circumpolar current speed and volume. (One of the fuzzy bits. I’ve actually got some data for the first bits… this one is speculation through and through… other than the wind driving the current, that bit is known.) How solar changes would speed up one polar vortex and slow down the other is, er, ill defined. Perhaps an “ozone thing”, perhaps a “cloud thing”, perhaps a “charged particle solar flux” thing…

So if that last bit can be worked out, what solar dingus modulates one polar vortex up and the other down in speed, the rest fits together fairly nicely. And what ought to be a “TSI has little impact globally” as one pole picks up and the other slows down gets turned into a Hot / Cold excursion due to differential land forms having differential impacts on air vs water.

I suspect it may be partially tied to things like earth wobble from gravitational impacts of moon / sun (thus their ustility in predicting) but that too is just speculation. I’m not the best at the physics of spinning things and I’m still puzzling over why “spin orbit coupling” is clear at the subatomic level but we simply ignore it at the planetary level. So someone gifted with “spining things” and at least a “3 body problem” and possibly a “6 body problem” needs to attack that point.

Pamela Gray says:
One of my favorite things I used to do with my grandma was use the old pressure cooker during canning season

Me too. And I learned a lot from it. Your analogy is great.

And I think a combination of the clouds and solar modulated O3 (that blocks a unique chunk of off planet IR radiation…) are the “rocker”.

There was an article a while back about a ‘cloud iris’ being found over the oceans that served to modulate heat exit for stability. I’d add to that a solar driven O3 “IR Window” at the poles that ‘changes the rocker’…

There are many known oceanic and atmospheric oscillations that have both short and long term phases. Several are also known to be strongly teleconnected to ENSO changes. Right now, it appears to me that several indices have switched to “cool” for NH weather pattern variation predictions. Some are highly variable and don’t have much of a long term pattern evidenced by the short data series. Others are showing longer term patterns as well as short term noise. Again, the caveat being the short data series.

Here is a good place to start looking in on the discussion and data available for research purposes.

For example, under the subtopic Pacific/North Amercian Pattern there is this discussion:

“Although the PNA pattern is a natural internal mode of climate variability, it is also strongly influenced by the El Niño/ Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon. The positive phase of the PNA pattern tends to be associated with Pacific warm episodes (El Niño), and the negative phase tends to be associated with Pacific cold episodes (La Niña).”

The outlook appears to be that the PNA will continue in its negative mode. The AO is also in its negative mode.

Under the subtopic North Atlantic Oscillation there is this:

“The NAO exhibits considerable interseasonal and interannual variability, and prolonged periods (several months) of both positive and negative phases of the pattern are common. The wintertime NAO also exhibits significant multi-decadal variability (Hurrell 1995, Chelliah and Bell 2005). For example, the negative phase of the NAO dominated the circulation from the mid-1950’s through the 1978/79 winter. During this approximately 24-year interval, there were four prominent periods of at least three years each in which the negative phase was dominant and the positive phase was notably absent. In fact, during the entire period the positive phase was observed in the seasonal mean only three times, and it never appeared in two consecutive years.

An abrupt transition to recurring positive phases of the NAO then occurred during the 1979/80 winter, with the atmosphere remaining locked into this mode through the 1994/95 winter season. During this 15-year interval, a substantial negative phase of the pattern appeared only twice, in the winters of 1984/85 and 1985/ 86. However, November 1995 – February 1996 (NDJF 95/96) was characterized by a return to the strong negative phase of the NAO. Halpert and Bell (1997; their section 3.3) recently documented the conditions accompanying this transition to the negative phase of the NAO.”

Outlooks are for continued negative conditions and has maybe flipped to its longer term cool oscillation.

My point is that any one of these indices, and indeed all of them, need to be considered when looking at Solar correlates and mechanisms. Have you done wriggle matching with any of these? Over how many Solar cycles? Which Solar parameter will you be selecting as the instrument of change? What is your proposed plausible and testable mechanism and can the energy source of this change be calculated to fit your proposed theory? Of even more importance, you must describe your chosen Solar parameter in terms of what the oceans and atmosphere are doing when your Solar parameter is not in play (which you stated is sometimes the case). In other words you cannot just focus on when they are synced up. You must extend your theory when they are not synced up and explain why your Solar connection is no longer in the game. You must consider the null hypothesis in case your theory is dumped on its head with a normally active Sun in the presence of a cool Northern Hemisphere.

For me, I can use these oceanic and atmospheric indices to predict maybe a month ahead and in some cases, a stab at a decade if a major index is in one of its warm or cool oscillations compared it a neutral oscillation. My stab is that El Nino will show up now and then among a predominantly neutral/cool ENSO pattern (if there is such a thing) and that the AO and NAO will stay cool for quite a while. The Eastern parts of the US and Europe will have a pretty long stretch of cooler weather, especially in the Winter, and the Western part of the US will continue to confront warmer and cooler conditions depending on the more noisy El Nino ENSO pattern. If there is a kind of long term oscillation, then the Western US will also be cool for a while as we experience more La Nina’s than El Nino’s within the backdrop of neutral conditions.

The mechanism for this: Movement of energy in and around the globe with some leaking out to space in various amounts, replenished well or scantilly by a fairly constant source of Solar SWR, depending on current oceanic and atmospheric conditions at the moment. Because of the size of our oceans and its ability to absorb SWR heating at greater depths, and its relatively slow movement track, combined with the atmosphere and its relatively fast movement track, differences of this energy transfer are likely noisy as well as oscillatory in different short and long term lengths of time. Bottom line, there is sufficient energy transfer oscillation to internally and intrinsically produce the noisy engine needed to create short and long term trends in the presence of a relatively constant Solar input taking care to replenish the leaks.

“The polar winds are diven by variations in the polar air flow, driven by solar actions. The variations in S.Polar air flow drive the circumpolar current speed and volume. (One of the fuzzy bits. I’ve actually got some data for the first bits… this one is speculation through and through… other than the wind driving the current, that bit is known.) How solar changes would speed up one polar vortex and slow down the other is, er, ill defined. Perhaps an “ozone thing”, perhaps a “cloud thing”, perhaps a “charged particle solar flux” thing…”

I’m with you on that and under my current scheme of things the AO and AAO ought to respond similarly to solar changes but it has previously been pointed out to me that the fit is not good on short timescales. However I read elsewhere that the fit improves over longer timescales and as I’ve said before what interests me is the MWP / LIA/ Current Warmth periodicity of about 1000 years peak to peak.

A poor match in the short term and a better match in the longer term suggests phasing issues perhaps because northern continents respond faster than southern oceans and feed back to the pole a response that puts the polar vortices out of phase in their reactions to solar forcing.

Unfortunately the records for AO and especially AAO variations are not as long as I need to resolve such matters. We will have to watch, observe and think.

Drooping Turns says:
Could someone please direct me to an explanation of what is known about Piers’ “Solar Lunar Action” method of forecasting? I understand that the details are closely held for business reasons. Still someone must have some idea how it works.

Well, as it’s “closely held” there is little public known.

What I can add is speculative, at best. Some of it is a bit ‘fringy’ too.

OK, sun earth and moon are spinning in space all gravitationaly bound. One wiggles, the other wiggles. One wobbles, the other wobbles. They also bob up and down.

One of those “bobs” is, IIRC, a 19 year cycle of the moon.

As the moon moves up and down through the plane of rotation, the earth wobble changes a little bit. As both the earth and moon orbit the sun, they speed up and slow down and get closer and further away. All this tends to jiggle the air flow ( I’ve got an article somewhere on lunar diven air tides…) and water flow on the planet that influences the weather.

Stir in some naturally oscillating systems to provide ‘interesting’ feedbacks (like Ice in the Arctic modulating how that ocean cools… and warm Pacific waters with an 18 year time lag modulating Arctic ice) and you get a variety of cycles of changes that then can all interact. (The “natural oscillations” folks talk about. Pamela has a good lock on how this bit works.)

So you set all this in motion and watch it for a while. The clueful notice patterns that repeat. Ergo the good predictions. The clueless build computer models and play with their tiny CO2 trying to make it big and interesting and think others ought to be impressed with it. We look at how tiny and useless it is and just chuckle. But it’s theirs, and it’s all they have to play with…

Please keep it simple, I was a Political Science major.

If you can explain politics, you can handle ungodly complexity…

Sidebar:

For what it’s worth, there is a “19 counter” at Stonehenge. It looks like the whole thing was a giant astronomics lab. They were critically dependent on weather for food production. IMHO, that whole “Religious Celebration” explanation is just garbage. The folks digging the place up were not engineers and didn’t understand a machine when they saw one.

Circular slide rules and physical observation tools gain precision with size. They made it large to get more precision. The plains out to several miles in each side are part of the tool. Cleared to get precise horizons for observation of rise and set times and places.

Why do this?

I think they had a handle on the same thing Piers Corbyn is doing. Watching the lunar position and how it and the sun interact to wobble the earth and then how that gets reflected in weather (that determins when and what to plant…)

There has been a metal “hat” found that shows the moon in all it’s phases over a 19 year cycle. It, too, has been given the “religion” wash. It’s not. It’s a convenient conical lunar cycle calculator.

So, Stonehenge gives you precise readings on when you have solsticies, equinox and various stellar alignments. These give you a very precise “clock”. It also gives a very nice lunar / solar eclipse predictor (using the Aubry stones) and has a 19 year counter in the inner stones. Everything you need to tell when to plant, what to plant, and what the weather will be like ( IFF I’ve got it right how Piers Corbyns stuff works…).

I’ve not worked out yet if they have a 176-208 ish solar / gas giant counter anywhere, but I’d not put it past them. Climate and stock stuff have been taking time away from the Stonehenge hobby / interest, so it’s likely to be a while before I get back to it. Sigh. Relearning what we once knew is a full time job.

At any rate, the thesis is that the various bobbing, spinning, wobbling interactions have some repeatable and recognizable patterns to them and that you can discover and use these to your advantage. One example is that the solar sunspot cycle is rather close to the orbital period interactions of the gas giant planets and the thesis is that them “stiring” the sun around drives the spot cycle.

Solar scientists like to call this Astrology. Yet it is actually shown to have fairly strong corrolation. But it’s not known “how”. So the whole thing sits. Two sides tossing rocks at each other. A side effect of this is that if you DID use planet and lunar positions to guide accurate prediction, you would be well advised to keep it a secret lest you, too, be vilified with “ASTROLOGER!!!!” by those who have pretty “scientific” theories that don’t work. BTW, most of the folks who believe “the planets do it” are NOT interested in astrology. They are interested in the mechanics of something we do not understand, but can see happen.

Can anyone point me to a side-by-side comparison of Piers Corbyn’s predictions vs. the MET’s? I’m not willing to take on faith the statement that PC has been right “85% of the time” or that such a percentage is higher (or lower) than the MET’s without data.

However I don’t want to descend into minute detail at this point. I think that is the very mistake that has stymied the climate establishment.

In the end it is just a matter of energy in versus energy out. If that changes due to an external cause then so be it.

I’m not sure that it is possible or desirable to try and engage in detailed wiggle matching. The scenario I paint fits on the 1000 year timescale. It matters not to me that the fit is poorer on shorter timescales.

From time to time such as now the sun makes such a large and sudden step change that its effects become obvious in the short term thereby swamping all else.

I find it very hard to discount a solar influence given recent events added to all the other ‘coincidences’ that I referred to above.

I have set out a number of predictions and if any of them go awry then I risk falsification. That is the best I can do for the moment.

“Bottom line, there is sufficient energy transfer oscillation to internally and intrinsically produce the noisy engine needed to create short and long term trends in the presence of a relatively constant Solar input taking care to replenish the leaks.”

Yes that is the bottom line. But there isn’t.

That is where I also depart from Leif Svalgaard and Bob Tisdale.

No amount of solely internal variability can create a 1000 year peak to peak oscillation from MWP to LIA to date (and going back before the MWP) which reasonably closely matches changing solar surface activity AND jetstream shifting.

For it to be solely internal you would have to point to a LENGTHY period of time when the jets were poleward (or zonal) at a time of quiet sun and equatorward (or meridional) at a time of active sun. It can be done on short timescales but not on century plus timescales.

The jets were poleward in the MWP and in the late 20th century. They were more equatorward in the LIA, Dalton Minimum, Sporer Minimum, during the weaker cycle 20 and now. You need to jump that hurdle to be taken seriously. Between those equatorward periods the jets moved a bit poleward again as the sun regained activity.

Unless you want to suggest that the internal Earth system variability drives the solar changes.

There is just too much historical evidence supported by a large number of isotope studies for the whole thing to be an internal oscillation or even set of internal oscillations.

So one could say that the most important part of pressure cooking is intrinsic to the pressure cooker and can be adjusted, with the heat source being extrinsic and can either vary a bit or be quite stable without much change happening inside the cooker. Take the rocker off, or change weights and suddenly change is upon us.

The metaphor isn’t perfect but may help some understand my thinking of extrinsic versus intrinsic drivers of weather (short term and long term) pattern change.

OK, let’s run with this…

So you turn on your pressure cooker, and what happens. It achieves a stable state. Or does it? The weight rises until it levitates in perfect harmony with the pressure. Except it doesn’t. What the weight does is jiggle around in the steam – it overshoots, then settles down lower than it should, then overshoots.

What’s the temperature during this? Depends on the pressure – PV=nRT and all that. So when the weight is at the top end of it’s travel, the temperature is lower and vice versa. Now lets say your sense of time is not what it should be, and it takes 1470 +- 500 years for the weight to reach the top and then fall back down.

Now lets assume the flame flickers. Not much, the gas supply alters less than 1%. This flicker is cyclic, and takes round about 11 years. As part of this flicker, the flame changes colour from blue to yellow, and back. Can you tell over the 1470 years this flickering? No. Can you spot it over the 11 years? Maybe. Can you spot it when the yellow flame goes metastable for a protracted period of time? Oh yeah…

Why is that? The flame is important. Some wavelengths like UV penetrate more deeply than others. Not so important for a pot, makes a difference if you were trying to heat an ocean. Other times the flame will induce condensation which must be “burned off” by the transmitted heat. Maybe call that a Svensmark flame?

Next we have a cook, who moves the pot around in a circle to stop the food sticking. That takes 21,000 years. He also tilts it from side to side taking 41,000 years. His name: Milankovitch.

In short: If you think *anything* is in a stable state, you need to change your temporal frame of reference. Go quickly enough, and even nothing seethes.

Sometimes, what is a long cycle for us, is just random banging and clattering for something else, because its temporal reference frame is so different to ours. What we perceive to be a long established cycle of glacial/interglacial, is just water hammer to the Earth, and for it, it’ll stop soon.

Actually, this is the method of the “New AI (Artificial Intelligence).” See the cover story in the January issue of Wired, just out. The Met Office’s parallel processing supercomputer is very Old School.

Piers has shown up here and commented in threads and directly challenged Leif’s constant Sun theory with it’s tiny variance. He doesn’t have a theory of the mechanism of the how the Sun’s variances affect climate/weather. He does state unequivocally that it does, and that CO2 is IRRELEVANT. But, Leif can’t abandon his dogma without a reason to, an observation, empiracally, of a variance outside of accepted max/min.

This is the true enigma of our age: The sun drives climate per Piers. The sun can’t drive climate per Leif.

In 2006 The New Scientist published an article stating that there was a new Ice age on the horizon, the depth of which would be determined by how long the sun remained dormant. Leif was a mis-quoted contibutor to that article. Maybe the Physics of the sun needs a re-evaluation. Threads regarding alternate models of the physics of the sun-namely Electric Universe (EU). Perhaps the ‘Landscheit Little Ice Age’ is the null
hypothesis of our current physics model of the sun. It would be interesting to see if the EU guys can account for what we are seeing whereas our current standard model cosmology cannot. I’ve followed the TSI threads and the EU threads but there really is no arguing with Piers results…and that rather settles the matter. Does it not?????

“But, Leif can’t abandon his dogma without a reason to, an observation, empirically, of a variance outside of accepted max/min.”

Leif accepts that there is greater variance (than seen in simple TSI) in the mixture of wavelengths and in the composition of the mixture of photons and particles that emanate from the sun over a cycle and presumably over multiple cycles.

However he refuses to accept a climate consequence or any internal system amplification effect even though he suggests that climate change is all down to internal system variability. I think he is a bit illogical there. If Leif wants to propose a powerful enough internal system variability then he should also accept it’s amplification potential when small external changes impact the system.

He has described to me and referred me to relevant links that indicate significant variability in the quantity of a number of separate reactions in the upper atmosphere in response to changes in the mixture of materials from the sun that produce substances that affect ozone quantities in those upper levels. Those quantities vary in line with the level of solar activity.

Conventional climatology places gtreat emphasis on ozone changes at lower levels as a result of UV variability but the ozone changes at higher levels from those other reactions are sparsely documented, largely unknown and barely investigated.

Having set that scene consider this:

i) According to recent data highlighted by Joanna Haigh the ozone reactions above 45km appear to be of the opposite sign to that expected and of the opposite sign to those below 45km.

ii) The observed jetstream shifting (or meridionality changes) appear to require just such a reverse sign effect somewhere in the atmospheric column for reasons I have set out elsewhere.

iii) Over periods of more than a century (or when there is a sudden step change in solar activity such as recently) the link between solar variability and jetstream behaviour is pretty much incontrovertible and many people other than Piers have chosen to see something in that and have been working to explain it.

There is clearly a top down solar effect on tropospheric pressure distribution and my best attempt to explain it so far can be found here:

One only needs to look at the LIA, the MWP, the Dalton Minimum, and the sunspot cycles to understand that the SUN is the place to look – first and foremost – for what is driving our weather and our climate.

It is a terrible pox on science that the climatologists have ignored the Sun as much as they have and instead have pointed at man’s puny excrement as the cause of any warming that has taken place recently. (and excrement it is, after all…)

Science has lost so much of its sheen since this entire episode began in the 1970s, at the end of the “coming ice age” scare. Since it was such a cold snap, anyone could have predicted it would warm up. James Hansen happened to be the snake oil salesman who put his name to it. And the world has been dumber ever since.

Anthropogenic global warming is anthropocentric, to say the least. At worst, it is barking up the wrong tree. Every effort to point to the Sun has been treated like the individual was Raymond the autistic patient from the movie, or looked down on as a Forrest Gump, someone who lucks into his correct moves.

Well, we have now gone over 2 decades since the IPCC was formed, and lo and behold, every Hyde Park soapbox rant out of its collective mouth talks about how important its existence is. The last thing the IPCC or its subcontractors wants is for some little squirrelly looking man “in Borough High Street,” London, to point out that the Empire Has No Clothes.

I take your check as my needing to take care how I express myself. The way I see it is, Holle and Bailey both have real ability, as well as the ability to move outside the accepted paradigms. So although (of course) any weaknesses in their theses need to be challenged, I still have confidence in their ability to stay openminded and embrace the challenges as growth points. I will have to look up Fred Bailey again – without checking, I cannot assume that his hypothesis has been terminally debunked, any more than Gavin Schmidt’s claims of debunking McKitrick and Nierenberg, or of McShane and Wyner, mean that either McK-N or McS-W have actually been debunked – though Gavin’s points may deserve consideration.

Funny thing is, I’ve generally thought of you as someone putting forward very interesting ideas but without enough evidence or scientific clarity or ability to deal with the fair parts of Leif’s criticisms. But I also trust you’ve learned from Leif by now. At one point when you two were at each other, I analysed each of your material and found… mathematical agreement hidden under the disagreements. Crazy!

I’ve always believed that there is important material in Landscheidt etc to explore, if it can be done in a way that can be seen to be scientific. And I am still sure that it needs a book written by someone of the calibre of Nigel Calder to cast it in classic popular form like Chilling Stars.

>>EM Smith >>For what it’s worth, there is a “19 counter” at Stonehenge. It looks like >>the whole thing was a giant astronomics lab. And of course 19 squared equals roughly the number of days in a year (and degrees in a circle, for obvious reasons). There are lots of symbiotic resonances in orbital mechanics. .

I will have to look up Fred Bailey again – without checking, I cannot assume that his hypothesis has been terminally debunked,

Fred’s solar chord theory is that the earth and other planets orbit the SSB and not the Sun. His son Howard and I have had lots of meaningful discussions on my blog where I showed him via the JPL data plotted in a graph that the theory was impossible. It may be a coincidence that the solarchord website is now gone or they just did the right thing. All of my data is up for grabs and is published, but I would do the same if the core theory was found to be incorrect. So far the unnamed minimum is right on track along with the climate implications.

“Atomic Hairdryer says:
December 20, 2010 at 7:09 am
He’s already been vilified by the CAGW faithful and that hasn’t worked because he has this irritating habit of beating the official forecasts and making our public funded forecasting services look like idiots.”

Hello everyone, moderators and readers all. It has been a while since I had a chance to check in here; like Anthony, I’m having family medical issues. BUT! It is nice to see Piers throw in with me on the forthcoming Little Ice Age. Look back a couple of years at some of my posts in the solar activity (sunspots) discussions.